How Like An Angel
by Aubretia Lycania
Summary: The journal of Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, now engulfed in a magical children's insane asylum, trying to find the event that placed him in this Hell. Rated for language and allusions to violence.
1. Of Angels

Author's Note: "How Like An Angel" just came out of the wild blue yonder one day and hit me on the head. Half the time, Harry's journal entries sound like him—but, like any teenaged writer with issues to work through, I tend to insert a bit of myself in there. Which is good, because I hoped these shifts would aid in displaying just how far into his own mind he is falling. I have a little prologue fic-let for this as well, but I'll allow this is to season a bit before posting. Please enjoy the madness. As always, feedback is greatly appreciated ^_^. 

How Like An Angel

By Aubretia Lycania

"What a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable; in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?"

- _Hamlet_, William Shakespeare

_*_

I'm kind of surprised they gave me this journal to write in—they seem to be rather happy with me safely tucked away in a straight jacket and in the corner of my room, huddled up like a little child. They call it therapy for me to work through my "issues" this way, as I'm not exactly willing to talk in our group sessions. And why would I? It's a bunch of maniac kids drooling and twitching, getting shot up with medicinal potions if they start even looking like they might be happy or excited, after which they go back to staring off into space, feeling absolutely nothing. They all have these creepy, blank eyes. It scares the hell out of me.

_I have a pretty strong feeling they're going to read this—the nurses seem real keen to get into my head and figure out a concrete way to call me insane and keep me here. It's what the Ministry wants, I know that. Fudge probably reckons I'll switch sides on him—being connected to Voldemort and all that. I'm a danger to everything they're working for, and what better way of keeping themselves safe but to lock me in a padded room in the basement of St. Mungo's with all the other psychotic wizarding children, tied up in a straight jacket and incapacitated by potions? That's right, ladies. Just in case you're reading this, I'm on to you._

_I don't really know what else to write about. Oh, cripes, there go the nurses again. I hate the group room. There's this little brown-eyed girl that keeps staring at me, and I really want to stare back—her eyes are very pretty, and I can't quite figure out why. If they were more alive they'd be gorgeous. Why I think that I don't know. She sits in one position all day, and if she gets upset, blocks and things start getting up and levitating in circles around her. She's downright spooky. There's another girl who'll be calm for hours at a time, then, out of nowhere, she'll toss her head back and start screaming curses in Swedish. They say she's been possessed by some overly persistent Viking demon since birth. She's really good at chess when she doesn't go round the twist on you in the middle of a game. Probably the scariest of the whole lot is a boy named Mika. Every few minutes or so, about a thousand slash marks will just appear all over his body, spraying blood everywhere—then a second later, the blood will disappear and the wounds heal up again, like nothing ever happened. Nevertheless, he's a bit pale and stutters a lot. The walls are magical, so people outside the ward can watch us without our seeing them—I can hear them talking sometimes, about the other patients, about me. I bloody hate this place. I hope Lupin never reads this, he'd kill me for using that word. My hand hurts, and now Cindy wants to play chess again. She's got that look in her eye, too. Maybe I can use my sleeves as earplugs?_

_*_

_Another day of interrogation. Oh, excuse me; they're still calling it group therapy. I don't see what was therapeutic about being prodded and poked on my childhood and sexual desires and watching Jonathan (another of the shaky ones) throwing up his sedative draft all over the floor. No matter—the tiles are even more disgusting when they aren't moist with electric green vomit. They're a kind of warped, sickly yellow and white, and look like some monster came in here a long time ago and sucked nearly all the color out of them. Come to think of it, everything here is like that, even the patients._

_I wish there was a window here in my room. The light is so bright it makes my head spin and my hands look blue, so that I can see each and every vein running into them. It's glinting off the buckles of the leather straps on my bed. I've tried taking them off during the night, but they're magically enforced. Besides, the moment I fidget, a nurse swoops in with her pouch of bottles clinking in the darkness. Her eyes are just like Cindy's Viking demon when those horrible lamps are off—and, mind you, sometimes at night they aren't off, which is even worse. She forces a weirdly sweet potion down my throat and sweeps off again, in the same ill tempered, twitchy way that Snape does. But I'd give anything to see him and not her, just for a moment. _

_The air never moves here—it stays the same, smells the same, and hardly anyone ever disturbs it. I've begun to notice the subtle differences—the sterile stench of the morning just after the orderlies have finished their disinfectant spells, the strengthening of the underlying scent of a thousand potion ingredients at midday, when we are all brought up for our medicine—pickled frog eyes and bat's feet, the sour primary foundations of the sedatives, the cold, grainy, earthy odor of moonstone, used in befuddling drafts. There is the fatty smell of antibacterial chicken-skin gloves, the abrasive chemical rank of the fluid that sterilizes the needles and other tools. There is the ever-constant, metallic smell of human blood, the pungency of defecation, and the acidic, almost sweetish odors of vomit and stale, icy sweat, always to be found on the air. Sometimes I'll spend an hour, maybe more, figuring them all out, dissecting each breath, when they leave me here like this in my room to be observed. Sometimes I'll count the stitches in the padding on the wall, staring at the harsh white until I think I can see a castle on a lake, where clouds drift lazily by, teased by spring breezes. And when I gaze long enough at that hideous tile for a good thirty minutes, I can see, in the nasty yellow swirls, a glimpse of the pitch, green as emeralds, the stands empty, at peace. Ron is flying in circles around the goal posts, and Ginny is throwing the quaffle, trying her hardest to score, bright red hair flying like a fiery mane, and her brother is laughing when she misses again. Down on the soft grass, Neville is stroking one of his new plants that would attack any other person who would try that with them, and Luna, wand behind her ear, has the Quibbler open, upside down of course, her dreamy eyes studying it intently, oblivious to the rest of the world. And finally, somewhere in the empty stands, sits Hermione, reading a book on Wizarding Law as it concerns declaring individuals insane, trying to find a way to get me out. The wind is tugging slightly at her curly hair, and her eyes are alive, like two dots filled with flame, cool and collected and utterly powerful—the cogs in her mind are turning furiously, and a thousand ideas are firing at once, being collected, sorted, and re-fired at an incredible rate. _

_Then I blink, and all I see are sickly yellow tiles in dizzying blue light. _

_*_

_            Mika keeps asking me if I want to watch him make himself bleed—hard to do, as it just happens anyway. I keep telling the bugger no, but all he does is explode a minute later, covering me with blood, before it's all gone again. A part of me knows it will always disappear, but I can't help seeing it drenching my hands, warm and the texture of velvet, the soft scent hovering below my nose. It's Cedric's blood, Sirius's blood, my parents' blood, a splatter of hot, brilliant red in the cold of a London Christmas carol, staining the dirty snow with a splash of new color in the drab grey light. And just like that, he takes it back again. I wish he'd just stop._

_            That tile is really disgusting. But I can't help staring at it. Hermione has taken to waving at me from the pitch, and Neville has a weird new cactus that glows purple at dusk. Sometimes, just after they feed me my medicine, I'll get that soaring sensation in my stomach, like I'm flying my Firebolt, and I can hear Ron laughing somewhere behind me, Ginny calling, and the rush of wind roaring and rushing past by my ears._

_            Maybe I can cover it up with a sheet from off my bed. No, they'd notice and think it's some lunatic episode I'm having. I just don't like the way it looks, because whenever I stop seeing the pitch, that tile is there again, ugly as ever. Why would anyplace in the Wizarding world have tile like that? It's something Muggles put in their hospital wings, all flecked and horrible. Maybe if I think hard enough, it'll transfigure into wood flooring or something._

_*_

_            Since when was defending yourself from getting sprayed with blood called a psychotic outburst? I pushed Mika away—why shouldn't I have, when those slashes just kept appearing all over him, trying to drench me again? He does it on purpose—I just know it. So he hit his head; it's not as though he had any sane brain cells to be killed in any case. He needed someone to knock some sense into him. Stupid psycho. I want to feel sorry for him, I really do, but I'm tired of people being miserable. Everyone has a sob story—it makes me want to throw up and pull their hair out of their heads –that's when I'd like to watch Mika bleed. When his hair is matted with sticky black and he's screaming shrilly like a prepubescent girl. Of course I'd like to watch you bleed, Mika._

_            Oh, and Isolation is really funny. That was my "punishment" for attacking Mika, after the sedatives wore off. They said it was for my own—and the other patients'—psychological well-being. Bullshit. As though I want to be battered by levitating number blocks and shouted at in Swedish and have to listen to the nonsensical stuttering ramblings from dusty corners. I'd rather be alone in the soundless dark, where I can't see my fingers covered in blood or that disgusting yellow tile or Hermione waving to me, a smile alighting on her beautiful, ageless face, shining in the sunset light, a straight jacket wrapped tightly around me like comforting arms—cold, lightless peace, like the crypt. I saw odd things there—a red double-decker bus—Christmas wreaths—a little girl dancing with her father—Hermione turning to me, framed by light, eyes sparkling—there in the dark, like fireflies, behind my eyelids when I tried to escape them. But it doesn't matter—it was probably just my head trying to entertain itself—like when you dream about flying oysters and bagpipes—none of it makes any sense, it's just amusement while your seratonin levels go up. It's nothing. In any case, when they put me back in my room, I guess the potions had got to me a bit, because I was babbling like an idiot. So they left the straight jacket on for a while after that. Can't imagine why._

_*_

_            I'm so tired of that group room, I want to scream, oh god Cindy is so annoying, those psycho freaks need to know what it's like in Iso. I hate that fucking tile._

_*_

_            I that hermine was blood bus. want out they potion in my head where don't _

_smell like fried chicken i'm hungry. hate tile hate place tile tile tile Hermione laughing at me my brain is revolving tingle hot cold tile tile It hurts, I want to go home sleep._

_*_

_Disregard that last entry. Stupid journal, it won't let me erase or cross anything out. Just in case anyone's wondering, the Head Nurse can go fuck herself with that "electric therapy" thing of hers. It certainly didn't do me any good. Great idea, woman, make the patients even more psychotic by pumping electricity into their brains. Where's the bloody logic in that? Certainly explains why everyone drools liters by the hour. And guess what, I've another appointment with electrocution in the morning. Watch me dance around this irritating little cell of mine. This fucking place is insane. I swear Hermione's making fun of me from that hideous tile, I'm going to rip every single one of them out—there's forty-five in this room, I counted. I could do it._

_*_

_Maybe none of it was real. I mean, think about it—maybe after my parents died in a car crash after getting completely smashed at a party, I went absolutely batty and they stuffed me in this place, and the Dursleys, the magical world, were all a big dream I came up with in my insane stupor to be able to stand all of it, to feel like some tragic hero, so I wouldn't have to face reality. Wouldn't that be a mind-fuck? And then something happened in my little dream world to make me start waking up, and all my dream friends aren't really there, so they can't very well love me or care about me or die, I just imagine that they do. If I tried, I could change anything that happened. Hermione didn't really…_

_All right, this bus of thought is going nowhere. Train, I mean. I don't like buses. They're just these huge clunking hunks of metal that go round corners too fast and don't watch where they're going. Maybe I made those up too. Perhaps she just got too close, and I couldn't handle the fact that she wasn't real even when it felt so good, so had the bus come rocketing around, and when she turned to me gorgeous in my made-up winter sunshine, irresistible and wonderful, I just made her disappear. That's kind of how it was. But I don't care—she wasn't real, none of it was real, not magic or Ron or Luna or Dumbledore or Sirius or my parents being heroes or Neville or the Ministry or Lupin or the Weasleys and how they always looked after me, none of it was real, not even her, so it doesn't matter._

_If she was real, she wouldn't have kissed you then had the stupid idea to walk out into the street like an idiot and turn to you, smiling so brightly you thought nothing in the world could ever look ugly again—and now look, she's nothing but a face in that hideous tile, jeering you from imaginary Quidditch stands while you're sitting here alone. It's almost funny. So that's my capacity. I managed to create and keep perfect love until it just reached its maximum point, the brim of the water glass, the place just below the highest existence of actually moving from the conception into the action, and, like a light, I put it out with a blink of the eye, faces in the tile that are gone before you even look away, and they were never there to begin with—so why does it hurt so bloody much?_

_*_

_She hates me. Hermione, please please stop telling me it's real, it's not, you're not, I got rid of you, it's my choice, everyone who loves me dies, that's how it is in that world, the only way it works. She keeps looking at me—the others are gone, it's just her sitting out late into the night, like she's waiting for me to come back—but I won't, I won't let you disappear again—stop looking at me, you sadistic bitch—go back to your book, I got rid of you, fuck fuck fuck, go away, your blood's all over my hands, all over me, like it was when I blinked and you'd disappeared, why'd you leave—I made you gone, I could bring you back anytime I wanted to so stop laughing at me like I can't change a thing, you aren't real! You can't laugh at me if you aren't there anymore—I'll get rid of you once and for all, then we'll see who's laughing, that's what you get, that's what you get, I'll make you ugly, I'll make you nothing again, just what you always were before, before I stared and saw you in the tile and made you real, made you mine, made you dead, and I'll make you NOTHING!_

_~*~_

It was just before midday when Remus Lupin stepped lightly from the lift, a whisper on the tiled floor, and slipped quietly into the Children's Psychiatric Ward of St. Mungo's; the expression on his face was somber and heavy with a thousand thoughts and worries, each etching a line irrevocably into his young flesh. His shabby robes swished about his feet, a deep black that time had not yet faded to grey, much the same as the suit beneath, and even the thread that darned various rips. He reached the nurses' station, lifted a soft hand and rang the tinny bell once, listening to its shrill echo as it filled the little waiting room, which ended in heavily reinforced doors, locked from the outside with a large metal switch. He repressed a shudder at the sterile cold of the ward—to think that Harry was tied up in this terrible place—but no, Dumbledore had said that it would be in his best interest to be committed for a couple months, to receive professional help instead of their feeble hands, and rather than being forced to engage in normal social interaction at school. Yet Remus could not entirely fight off the slight tightening of his stomach, which foreboded darkly to his conscious mind—he knew Harry and his escapist tendencies all too well. He needed to be surrounded by familiar people and places, not merely stuffed out of the way where he would no longer be a burden.

An elderly nurse, her hair bleached a silvery platinum blonde, approached the counter and smiled rather unconvincingly—a smile full to overflowing with rotting, blackening and mossy teeth which magic had not dared to cure—holding the clipboard defensively before her chest like a battle-worn shield.

"Visitor?" she asked unnecessarily in a crone-like, croaking voice.

"Yes," Remus responded through the glass, as politely as possible, despite his shock at the grotesque caretaker before him. _Harry must have had good laugh about this one._ "My name is Remus Lupin. I'm here to see Harry Potter, in Ward B."

The nurse lost her smile. "I'm sorry, but Mister Potter is quite incapable of receiving visitors at the moment. I'm afraid you'll have to come back an—"

"Why?" Remus asked hurriedly, both hands coming down on the counter with a sharp crack, disrupting the little bell. His calm eyes had become wild. "What's happened to him?!"     

The nurse took a step back from the glass, looking sternly at him, as though reprimanding an impertinent child. "Sir, please calm yourself before I call an orderly. Mister Potter has had a number of psychotic episodes in recent days. He has lashed out at fellow patients—putting them in need of emergency medical attention in many cases. The Head Nurse saw fit to place him into shock therapy, since which he has been kept in solitary confinement. He is violent and unresponsive to most forms of psychological treatment."

Remus closed his eyes and took a very deep breath. _One, two, three_…

"Please, it was me that had him committed at the first. I'm his guardian—I need to see him. I've just come from one of his best friends' funeral—" 

"Hermione, perhaps?" the nurse interjected, a keen, clever look coming into her eyes. At Remus's evident shock, she smirked. "We've allowed him a journal to record his thoughts—at the moment, it's the only treatment that seems to be working. He mentions her quite a bit, particularly as of late." She considered him for a moment. "Very well. It's often the parents and caretakers that need the most convincing. It's just about time for him to be receiving his medicine in any case. Come along."

The nurse hitched out her clunking ring of keys and exited the nurses' station; she strode briskly towards the enforced, heavy doors and opened a pattern of locks in a particular order, until at last the doors swung slowly inward. Remus frowned as he followed along in her curiously joyful wake, past cell after cell, from which came sounds both intriguing and terrifying, whimpers, mumbles, snarls, screams…

"Tell me, ma'am, just what is 'shock treatment'?" he asked cautiously, his voice nearly catching—it didn't sound good, whatever it was.

"A therapeutic technique for our most troublesome and violent patients, which sends an electric shock, coupled with a ribbon of magic, directly into the brain. Done numerous times, it works to eliminate aggressiveness. Potter's next treatment is scheduled for tomorrow morning—he's already had several thus far."

_He'll be long gone by that time_, Remus found himself thinking. A wave of cold overtook him again as a stream of shouted cursing reached him from behind a door.

"Cindy Baker," the nurse mused, shaking her head, making the repulsive silvery-blonde curls swing stiffly. "Her outbursts have become ever so much worse since the incident. Potter overturned a table on her; bruised her diaphragm rather badly."

"You can't mean Harry," Remus said, disbelieving, and looking from Cindy's door to the nurse. "He's angry, certainly, but he has been in the past. It takes quite a bit to make him want to hurt people, and he always goes for those he finds at fault. He's just not like that."

The nurse snorted derisively, not facing him and continuing her brisk tread. "The boy you knew, Mister Lupin, is no longer with us. You have obviously overestimated his mental capacity for stress and grief."

"I told you, ma'am, he's not like that," Remus responded, his voice low and dangerous.

The nurse placed her gnarled hand on the shining, sliver knob of a door at the end of a corridor; she turned at last to face him, a sneer playing about her thin, lemon-juice lips.

"You think so, Mister Lupin? You seem so very sure that no matter the event, your little ward, at least, can pull through—even if no one else can. Do you think he's celestial, Mister Lupin? Divine? I can very much assure you that you will find quite a different person than what you've come to see. He feels nothing but anger, expresses nothing but an astonishing amorality; he is a danger to everyone around him. That is the truth of the situation, and neither you nor I can deny it, or cure it."

She set to work on the many locks, ignoring the quietly seething eyes of Remus Lupin, watching her every movement, silently willing her to burst into flames. He felt a failing disappointment when she did not.

The door creaked slowly open, and Remus heard both himself and his companion gasp aloud in evident horror and slight awe.

The nurse spun on her heels and went clicking down the hall in her shining black Mary-Jane shoes, shrieking for an orderly; Remus, however, remained frozen in the doorway, taking in the sight before him in a surprised but somewhat gentle fashion, as though he had seen the sight before.

The austere, bluish light that flooded the rest of the ward was dimmer here—one of the two lamps which emitted the glow swung down over the room, broken into several pieces, hanging like a severed body, limp and impotent. The bed leaned at a forty-five angle, one of its legs bodily disassembled, and it shook as though readying itself to collapse. But the singularly most terrible part of it all was the sound.

Clink, clink. Clink, clink.

It was a hard, gravely sound, and came from behind a high pile of dull yellow flooring tiles, flung helter-skelter into a tottering heap beside the bed. The top-most tiles had been sprinkled over with an ominous amount of darkening blood, and, even as he watched, another leapt up to join the fray, clattering and causing the upper portions to fall away and reveal the cause of their disturbance. 

Remus began walking forward, into the mangled room.

He was crouching low on a foundation of rough wood and concrete, working fervently on yet another tile, chipping madly away at it as though each blow, each fragment torn away, caused him insurmountable pain, his feet and hands cut and bleeding over his metallic instruments stolen from the bed—tears leaking unbidden from his eyes even as he chuckled lowly, emitting the occasional isolated, inaudible word. Remus found tears falling over his own cheeks. There was shouting in the corridor, but he shut it out, heard the door click behind him and did not remember closing it.

"Harry?" he asked the still air and the eerie, flickering light, fearing those intent, savage eyes so wide and beautiful in their single-minded madness. After a moment, during which the terrible _clink-clink_ing finally subsided, the eyes found him. It seemed an eternity, before Harry's shaky, unsteady young voice filled the room, tearing Remus's heart to shreds.

"Sh—she wouldn't… wouldn't stop… _laughing_ at me. Because I couldn't _do _anything this time. I couldn't do _anything_!"

Remus smiled gently, trying with all his might to stop the tears. He failed. "Not even the angels could stop themselves from falling."       


	2. Understanding

Author's Note: The song is "Understanding/Wash It All Away" by Evanesence; this chapter is meant to be an interlude between the reality and the dream, the nightmare and the remembrance. Enjoy, absorb, before going on to chapter three.

Understanding

Harry sat, his head against the wall—it was the only sensation he came in contact with, the only sensation he felt akin with, that cold wall, like stone. There was a steady _drip, drip_, as of water falling far away and echoing a thousand-fold into his ears, frozen like a feather's touch just upon entrance, a dragonfly's wing, frozen in time. There were patterns of light upon the backs of his eyelids, like the kaleidoscope images he would see as a child in the dark cupboard, calling them magic, giggling within his own head at the thought of what his aunt and uncle would say if they heard him say it. And deep within him, there lay more images, stark and strange, daring him to look upon their frightening visages, like the countenance of God himself, Death upon his fell chariot, at its forefront pale horses like asphodel lilies, heads like skull, eyes of fire… and dancing smiles all. He felt himself smile. There she was, that glorious being, and her laugh was neither cold nor cruel, but simply… the past. It was Everything. The universe within a shivering snow globe, gray and white and bright, glistening red, turning and looking at him amid a whirl of dazzling light. 

__

_You hold the answer deep within your own mind_

_Consciously, you've forgotten it_

_T__hat's the way the human mind works_

_Whenever something is too unpleasant_

_Too shameful for us to entertain, we reject it_

_We erase it from our memory_

_But the imprint is always there._

And he remembered.

_The pain that grips you_

_The fear that binds you_

_Releases life in me_

_In our mutual shame we hide our eyes_

_To blind them from the truth that finds a way to who we are_

_Please don't be afraid_

_When the darkness fades away_

_The dawn will break the silence screaming at our hearts_

_My love for you still grows_

_This I do for you_

_Before I try to fight the truth my final time_

__

_We're supposed to try to be real_

_We feel alone when we're not together and that is real_

__

_Can't wash it all away_

_Can't wish it all away_

_Can't cry it all away_

_Can't scratch it all away_

_Lying beside you_

_Listening to you breathe_

_The light that flows inside of you_

_Burns inside of me_

_Hold and speak to me_

_Of love without a sound_

_Tell me you will live through this_

_And I will die for you_

_Cast me not away_

_Say you'll be with me_

_For I know I cannot bear it all alone_

__

_You're not alone, honey_

_Never, never_

__

_Can't fight it all away_

_Can't hope it all away_

_Can't scream it all away_

_It just won't fade away_

_Can't wash it all away_

_Can't wish it all away_

_Can't throw it all away_

_Can't scratch it all away_

_Can't fight it all away_

_Can't hope it all away_

_Can't scream it all away_

_Oh get it all away_

_O__h get it all away_

__

_But the imprint is always there_

_Nothing is ever really forgotten_

__

_Because I'm dying too_

_Because I'm dying too_

_Because I'm dying too_

_Because I'm dying too_

_Because I'm dying too…_

It was Christmas time…


	3. So Close

Author's Note: The song is "So Close/ The Last Day" by Evanescence.

So Close

_I've spent so much tim__e_

_Throwing rocks at your window_

_That I never even knocked_

_On your front door…___

Curious, how beautiful a London Christmas seemed. The air was gray, the snow moist and filthy, making _shhhhh_ sounds in the dreary afternoon, as though entreating children to be silent and not disturb the newly born piles of white, on ledges and the very tip-tops of lampposts. Vibrant wreaths decorated shop doors—there were cakes and puddings in windows; trains ran in enticing circles just at the eye line of covetous youngsters, counting each moment until Christmas morning, which, though only a day away, couldn't be coming any slower. The streets were slick and black like an icy river, running through the city as though the very waters of the Styx, and the vehicles monolithic ferrymen upon it, accepting their fares and moving on with a gentle swoosh.

Harry had never a chance to tread the streets of London during the winter—in fact, he had spent so much of his life within the magical world, he had very well forgotten the odd quirks and appreciable idiosyncrasies of his muggle heritage. And he wasn't the only one. Oftentimes, he found Hermione beside him give a slight gasp when a car rushed by, rustling their jackets like an ill wind, and sweeping her hair away momentarily. The streets bustled with hurried shoppers, and the greatest miracle was in the fact that they had not yet lost one another.

"Where did your parents want to meet you again?" Harry asked her at yet another light, talking rather loudly over the clatter of the busy sidewalk.

"I already told you, The Leaping Salmon! It shouldn't be that much farther, if I remember right!"

Harry shook his head. It had become fast apparent that neither of them could adeptly navigate the London streets, and as much as he enjoyed a respite from Grimmauld Place, he didn't much fancy getting lost, either. Hermione had promised her parents that, as she would be staying with friends over Christmas, she would meet them at a favorite restaurant—which was blessedly close to Order Headquarters—to have lunch. Not very keen on going on her own, and since Harry was suffering intense claustrophobia, she'd invited him along to keep her company. And as both had "conveniently" forgotten to alert certain Order members, they were in the clear for at least a few hours, without exacerbating bodyguards treading in their footsteps. It would certainly help to know where they were _going_, though.

"Hermione, let's take a break and try to figure out where we are," Harry suggested before they crossed. "You don't really look—"

"Harry, I _know_ where we're going!" Hermione responded, turning on him irritably. "It's just…" she looked about with determined eyes, her hair tossing. "Just…" She swallowed, alighting on the window of a shop. "You know, we have a bit, and I have to get my mum's present wrapped in any case."

Harry fought back a snicker as Hermione pulled him away from the intersection and into the nearest store, letting the door shut with the gentle tinkling of a bell. It was a standard Muggle gift shop, lit softly and bright with multi-colored Christmas lights; fake snow littered nearly every surface and sparkled benignly, onto manger scenes and ceramic angels, their arms open, sweet smiles simply dancing upon their lips. Harry peered at one as Hermione went to queue up at the counter—it did not look to him the way an angel should. There was a celestial quality missing from their visages, an inner glow, a blinding flash, a series of indescribable color that could not be conveyed by gaudy paint or gloss.

"My mum used to say to me that we all have an angel, one that watches over us," Hermione's voice wandered into his reverie. He shifted his eyes somewhat cautiously in its directly, to find her watching him intently, very close at hand, brown pools soft and warmer than the shop itself, like cinnamon cookies before bed, freshly-made and sweeter than honey. "I'm not entirely sure I believe her anymore, but it was nice to think it when I was little."

Harry stared at her for a long moment, not daring to breathe; there, in her eyes, was a soft effervescence, a brilliant radiance, spun candy and flickering fire, smooth chocolate and electricity, running hot through his veins and quickening his heart to the pace of a lightning bolt, somewhere between cloud and sky, heavens and earth, before the shock, before the instance, before the next second, two figures on a Grecian urn, frozen in time.

_I walk by statues_

_Never even made one chip_

_But if I could leave a mark_

_On the monument of the heart_

_I just might lay myself down_

_For a little more than I had…_

__

"Harry?" came Hermione's voice again; Harry shook his head, as though to clear it.

"D'you know, Hermione," he began, afraid to stop and terrified of going on, "that when I'm about to do something stupid, there's always this voice in the back of my mind that tells me to be sensible… not put myself in danger. That voice… kind of… well, it _does—_it sounds like… you."

Hermione was silent for a long moment. The bell chimed; the cash register chinged. Like predawn sunshine, the slightest whisper of a smile tickled her lips beautifully, in a way that far outshone the whorish ceramic vassals on the shelf beside them—she breathed, her heart beat, engulfing her inner tissues with warm blood, a trace of brown freckles dotted her cheeks, her curly brown hair kinked at odd angles, frazzled by the winter winds—she was _real_, so unbearably, incredibly _human_.

And in that instance, Harry realized that he would have died a thousand times over, left an unutterably meaningless existence behind, wandered in dark, his fumbling fingers outstretched and searching forevermore—had Hermione not come into his life. He found his lips forming words without his consent, soft and almost inaudible, yet an underlying portion of his mind knew that she would hear them.

"You should believe your mum, Hermione. You're living proof that she's right. About angels, I mean."

He realized that the heat of the shop had begun to fog his glasses up a bit; still watching him with her calm intensity, Hermione slowly reached up and removed them—she gazed into his eyes, dissecting an unknown substance there, so sharp, so keen and gentle that Harry felt a shiver run through him, starting from the feet and reverberating up to his lips, little shoots of hot and cold flowing like transcendent adrenaline through his veins. The shoppers bustled by—did none of them notice the heart that beat like a tribal drum with his ribcage, irregular and pounding and thrusting searing blood throughout him?

The door chimed. The register chinged.

Hermione deliberately placed the cloudless glasses back upon his nose, never once looking away. Without stepping back or retreating an inch, she took his hand into hers. "My mum's present is wrapped. Let's go—it's too hot in here."

Then, the smile still waltzing weightlessly upon her lips, eyes fervent and still afire, she tugged him out the door. Harry followed behind, somewhat short of breath and utterly bewildered, wondering at the things that had crossed his mind—Hermione was his best friend, he certainly cared deeply for her—but he had never _seen_ her the way he had in the shop, never truly _looked_, never realized or made the connections or understood what she had done to his life. She was the first friend he'd ever had that he could trust with _everything_, his fears and thoughts and deepest concerns—even when he hadn't told her, he had still known that he could. But what frightened him the most was the look of calculation and zealous intelligence he had glimpsed within her—she _saw_ him, had _always_ seen him, simply without his knowledge. As though she had been waiting for him to open his eyes, the perceptive core of her viewed at last his own understanding—yet Harry knew deep within that he did _not_ understand—not yet. The mere idea of this girl beside him, pulling him through the crowds, her hand a warm spot in this eternity of cold winter, was terrifying. His heart was swelling—it felt so wonderful and so horrible, because he couldn't wrap his mind around the idea, of what the bottom of his mind, the most primal and innate and intricate part of him, was saying…

You… I… Her… She… Me… You… You— 

_I don't know how._

"Dance with me, Daddy!" a little girl cried, her voice bubbly and jubilant—they were in a square now, just beside the bustling street alive with traffic—a choir on the walk was singing _O Holy Night_—out of the corner or his eye, Harry glimpsed a little girl in a blue jacket being spun about by her father, laughing with joy.

_"Fall on your knees!_

_ O, hear the angels' voices!"_

Hermione stopped abruptly, her head turned away and watching the little girl. Harry, nearly at a loss for words, felt he should say something in any case—if for no other reason than to fill the void, to feel close to her again.

"Hermione, I—"

She whirled before he could finish, stealing his breath in a gasp—as though she had been holding it in for years, Hermione leapt up on her toes and pressed her lips against his, one hand still intertwined with his fingers, her other reaching up to the side of his neck to steady herself; Harry's eyes shot open for a startled, star-struck moment—the world spun, nothing of it registered even as his sights landed upon it—there was only her and her body alight and close against his, the shaking in his limbs as he realized nothing, not even flying, had ever felt so natural or liberating or wonderful in his entire span of being, that the wings within his stomach were lifting him away above the earth—his eyes closed, his arms found the gentile curve of her back and pulled her in tighter, so that they were one collective existence, one essence, neither male nor female, neither light nor dark, neither on the ground nor flying through the heavens, but all and none at the very same time.

_The last day…__The last day…_

"_Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we…_"

"Daddy, daddy, lift me up!"

Their lips' embrace broke softly; they pulled an inch away, eyes still closed, a cold wind tugging at their clothes, pushing them together, pulling them apart, a darkly playful chess game made with singing mistrals. Harry felt Hermione's lashes tickling his cheek as his eyes slid open and out of the dream. Another cold wind blew—her hair was twirling around her in a whirlwind of snowflakes, which seemed to be coming faster and faster still… Their eyes locked, hooded but alive, firing messages faster and more numerous to be deciphered by the logos of the human mind. At last, Hermione spoke, her voice low, slight, and lyrical—the voice ever present in the back of his head.

"A storm's coming."

She let go, returned to the heels of her feet and her normal height, keeping her hand in his, and approached the curb, watching the traffic with a partially intent eye. A break in the clouds appeared, beaming softly down on the street with a smile of gentle winter sunshine. Harry's eyes closed once again, breathing in the cold air, so suddenly fresh and invigorating.

"Thank you…" he whispered. "Hermione, I…"

She took a step into the street, but at the sound of his voice, she turned to him—the beams of light seemed to move—they framed her like a halo of swirling mist, soothing and blinding, so beautiful it was breath-taking—and there it was, that ballet of a smile pirouetting about her lips, in the corner of her mouth, her eyes sparkling like a thousand silver bells, a thousand rushing creeks, a thousand winter suns on a thousand winter days, and one, singular, expositional and final moment, the beams just landing for that eternal second, soaring and plunging and soaring again, a bird with two wings turned to one, flying about in spiraling circles… In her eyes was his answer, without words, complete but unrefined, primal, gorgeous…

_The last day._

In years to come, Harry would never be able to quite describe what it is that happened—all he knew was that, as he blinked through the whirl of snowflakes that blanketed the day, there was a flash of red. When he opened them again, he caught the screech of wheels, the over-bearing scent of tar and rubber, saw the back end of a double-decker bus speeding past—and Hermione, as though the wind itself had swept her away, was no longer there. "Hermione…!" Harry gasped, his voice breaking. He was too shocked to connect what must have happened, too numbed, in that instant, to realize anything—only to find Hermione, who must have been on the other side of a car, the other side of a truck, just beyond his vision—he ran, through a tumult of confused and deafening traffic—honks, whistles, confused voices, all about him in an ear-splitting roar—invading him, tearing him apart—_Where is she, I know she's here, just around that—_

And she was.

It was as though some charitable soul had sprinkled the reddest of rose petals upon the snow—Harry had a distinct impression of the bright velvet dresses that little girls wore, that Hermione, even, must have worn to church, each year on Christmas. Trimmed in white, smooth and brilliant, swirling skirts and long sleeves, little matching ribbons in the hair, tiny flowers that walked through the snow, bundled up but as radiant as ever in that twirling, fair wonderland world… ephemeral, evanescent, will-o'-the-wisp creatures they were, these little winter angels, seen, like dryads, on one day of the year, holy and handsome and hard to grasp, sweet little sugar puffs, candy-canes, a dance of red and white.

Harry realized he was cold, and wet… there was blood on his hands—his knees were drenched—and the form on the ground beside him was that of Hermione, already growing stiff and icy. A crowd was growing around them—a man was shouting, but it had grown somehow far away from him… a haze in the gray afternoon… the buildings were dingy, the snow was dirty, the blood was rapidly turning black… but her face, calm and untouched, was white as a winter morning. 

_Wait a time,_

_To spare these lies we tell ourselves…_

__

Harry bent over her, his body frozen, his hands inflexible and stinging like needles—but all that didn't matter—it wasn't real. There was only her, the lips still red as holly berries. Closing his eyes, shutting out the feel of that tiny, singular tear which froze on his cheek, he let their lips meet again, hoping to have once more that dancing smile, that sugary and wonderful pirouette of magic, and be one with it. The winds blew, but they smelled of peppermint and gingerbread, and all was light on the back of his eyes. 

_These days have come and gone—_

_But this time is sweeter than honey._

Fin 


End file.
